


And it is all but moments in time.

by Angelicalangie



Category: Battlestar Galactica
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-09
Updated: 2011-05-09
Packaged: 2017-11-03 09:14:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/379738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angelicalangie/pseuds/Angelicalangie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lee is thinky</p>
            </blockquote>





	And it is all but moments in time.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are welcome, this is entirely unbeta'd. It is but a work of fiction, no one named or actual events have ever occurred in reality to my knowledge. These characters belong to NBC/Universal, SKy and affiliates as well as RDM - no offense meant, no profit made - don't sue - or we'll both be broke trying to get money from a stone!

  


Title: And it is all but moments in time.  
Rating:PG at the moment  
Character: Lee Adama  
Category: Comment fic exploring Lee's evolving experience with his mother  
Summary: Lee is thinky  
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica  
Author Notes: Comments are welcome, this is entirely unbeta'd. It is but a work of fiction, no one named or actual events have ever occurred in reality to my knowledge. These characters belong to NBC/Universal, SKy and affiliates as well as RDM - no offense meant, no profit made - don't sue - or we'll both be broke trying to get money from a stone!

  


She had fallen apart so often and so frequently that he had soon learned to hold her together as child. Emotions wrapping around her, like strings on paper packages until strings became ropes, and he an anchor. He'd grown up too fast, learned the realities of the world too soon and today, watching her bury her son, he once again held her together. All the rehab trips – there had been more than one try to dry out, the visits to counsellors and psychotherapists and all the alternative practitioners in the 12 colonies – or so it had felt – still hadn't conquered all of her self hatred and esteem issues. The ones she had wittingly buried at the bottom of bottle, but who had returned more ruthless than ever in the morning. The same ones that were threatening to overtake her in her grief for her fallen son. The ones that had emerged as her husband buried his head and apparently most of his heart in the mistress of his career and the ones that took hold with every successive sojourn on his Battlestar. And you always hurt the ones you love the most, or so the song went. He bore more than the emotional scars of that, not that he would ever admit it to himself or anyone else, denial being the strongest force in the universe, far beyond that of gravity. Why had physics ignored the forces of emotion?

And so here he was, arm wrapped around a woman who was breaking apart, despite his better ministrations. Watching his little brother – someone he had taken responsibility for when his father had struck the final death knell and moved out of the cabin they had shared as a family – be buried in the bright sunshine of a fine summers day. The little brother who he had taken responsibility for, when the woman shattering in grief today, failed to be able to take responsibility even for herself – let alone the two young boys under twelve that were left in her care. And today he was surrounded by family he hadn't seen in years, looking at a woman that only a few short months ago he had nearly frakked on a dinner table, when he had barely known her – but knew enough how significant she was to his little brother. And still he felt the eldest out of all of them – bar of course – the priest to his right, or maybe even including the priest, clinging to his beliefs in the sight of the death of a child. His mind floated back to when he had been a child.

* * *

He was covering under his bed, and his mother was screaming unintelligibly. She had come home late. Lee had already put his brother to bed. Zak was seven, but had finally acquiesced to his brothers pleas at 9. Lee was tired, tired of putting his brother to bed, of staying up late doing his homework, staying up late to make sure his mother got home safely, staying up late being a punch bag for her when her fears and inadequacies came crashing down around her, and she came crashing around him, blow after blow, be it physical or emotional would rain down on him, like the flak cover that his father would talk about when telling him bedtime stories. But those stories were far behind him. Now the wars his father told him seemed more real, as he lives in his own battlefield. When had life become a war?

He lay squished flat to the floor, hoping that if he lay still enough, flat enough to the perpendicular surface of the floor he might be ignored, might become one with it. Might be ignorable and she would pass out once again in the bathroom, so that he could emerge, clean her up and get her somehow into bed. Perhaps, it would happen for him to get some sleep before he would have to get up for school. But it wasn't to be. She dragged him out of the crawl space under his bed and began her typical yelling. Zak woke bleary eyed, saw what was happening, and feigned sleep before she noticed he had awoken. Lee prayed that one day in the future his baby brother wouldn't notice this or remember it had occurred. It wasn't so bad tonight, she was screaming at him, and so he wouldn't have the bruises and the lies to tell in the morning. She screamed at him, not because he looked like his father, for that was Zak's place, but because he looked more like her and so reminded her of all her flaws and her perceived imperfections. She said she was doing this to prevent him ever being her, but it wasn't ever something he was worried about. He knew he would never be anything like her. And so as she berated and screamed his mind floated to the future.

* * *

It's afternoon when he awakens, having managed, only the gods know how, to have gotten home in one piece. He finds himself face down on his couch, drooling and sweating out the drinking he managed to partake in the night before. He is dishevelled and shaky, feeling weak and out of sorts. Some part of his mind helps him put a name to it. It is a hangover, but it is of epic proportions. Just as he starts to feel sorry for himself memories cascade and coalesce in a remembrance of the night before. Of Kara on the the table, daring and teasing, her body a taunt and a lesson in desire. A lesson he is more than happy to attend in his less than sober mind. And so she kisses him and he is reminded of Ambrosia – which he would be, having drunk more than a few shots of it – but there is something dark and sensual and forbidden laying within those. Kisses don't come any better do they he later wonders

When he snaps back to reality he sees the answer-phone blinking away, he plays it to hear his brothers voice, light and breezy unaffected by any news that may have been shared. Unaffected by a childhood of violence at the hands of an alcoholic mother. He washes up and goes to meet them at the place described by his brother, he won't tell him that he went there in the academy too. He sees them joking and laughing, the drink flowing freely, like the rivers of Caprica City and suddenly he sees not Kara, but his mother. It's a sudden moment of realisation, but not one that he can resist. He walks over to them and Kara looks at him. There is no trace of embarrassment for the antics the night before and he realises that last night she had drunk far more than he realised and she can't even remember what she did last night. And suddenly he realises that she and his mother are so similar they could be cut from the same cloth.

 

* * *

He was sitting in the living room of his childhood home, the peace garden quietly bubbling away in the background and a book in his lap, memories floating through his mind, connections and minor epiphanies bursting in the forefront of his mind. Zak should be here. It was the one thought that kept floating through, but it has been 2 years now, life had moved on for them, all of them. Kara took a posting on Galactica – somehow she was friends with his father. To him that nearly made her persona non grata, but he couldn't deny the magnetic attraction he had for her so keeps in contact.

Time heals all wounds. So the belief held. These days his mother is holding up a lot better. He looks at her glowing, a giant rock of a ring on her finger, placed there last night. Finally the only person he has to take care of, hold responsibility for is himself. His mother has finally found the psychotherapist that she can get along with, the one who can hold a mirror up to her and show her herself as a whole and not the sum creation of her flaws. She hasn't admitted to the dark times they had, the punches he had as a teen. He doesn't even think that she remembers them. Drink makes some people forget the worst of memories.

She is happy now, drink no longer seems to have half as much sway and hold as it used to. Not that she touches it now. She is the mother she wishes could have been during her children's childhood. She is the mother Lee never thought he would ever see. She isn't cookie cutter by any standard, but she is now clear of thought and interested in her only surviving child's life. Looking at her though, he can tell she is genuinely happy, he no longer has to be the rope and anchor for her now, she has created her own, she recognises her own frailties and fragility, and knows how to strengthen and bolster herself. Some of that comes from actually being happy with being herself, and once more he wonders, how has science not studied the forces involved with emotions?


End file.
